This week a pedestrian bridge with an advertised "100 Year Lifespan" collapsed on its fifth day post erection. Architectural features of the bridge included concrete trusses and a concrete roof for aesthetic effect. The bridge collapsed onto an active roadway. Six cadavers have been recovered from the rubble so far (archived).
Monthly Archives: March 2018
Island Folk Plan To Celebrate Holiday By Taking Network Offline For A Day
Caving to religious groups and civil organizations, the government and mobile network operators on the island of Bali have decided to shut down connectivity to celebrate their local new year holiday. They insist wifi will be maintained for "strategic" services (archived).
US SEC, Elizabeth Holmes, And Theranos Announce "Massive Fraud"Charges And Proposed Settlement Together
The United States Securities and Exchange Commision announced it was filing charges of "Massive Fraud" against Elizabeth Holmes and her Initial Coin Offering, Theranos Labs. Curiously the press release revelaing charges also announced that a settlement has already been agreed to (archived). Also curiously absent from mainstream pantsuit coverage of the charges is the scent of corruption allowing the well connected pantsuits to escape with this sweetheart settlement:
Theranos and Holmes have agreed to settle the fraud charges levied against them. Holmes agreed to pay a $500,000 penalty, be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years, return the remaining 18.9 million shares that she obtained during the fraud, and relinquish her voting control of Theranos by converting her super-majority Theranos Class B Common shares to Class A Common shares. Due to the company’s liquidation preference, if Theranos is acquired or is otherwise liquidated, Holmes would not profit from her ownership until – assuming redemption of certain warrants – over $750 million is returned to defrauded investors and other preferred shareholders. The settlements with Theranos and Holmes are subject to court approval. Theranos and Holmes neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the SEC’s complaint.
Ripple Versus R3 Holdco Spat Continues
Nearly four years after its disposal, RIPple Labs continues being encumbered in litgation. In its fight with R3 Holdco, prominent provider of sinecures for stooges, RIPple Labs lost the contest over which court has jurisdiction (archived).
Trump Begins Cleaning White House With Firings
No longer content to let the marginal figures he surrounded himself with in the hope that they might come to love The Great Again, Trump has begun firing senior wafflers. Today's elemination list includes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein. Make "You're Fired", Great Again!
NSA's Payload for the 'Phuctorable' MikroTik Routers Found
Kaspersky Inc has published an analysis (archived) of a MS Windows rootkit, therein nicknamed "Slingshot".
The item exhibits the traditional smell of USG-authored shitware, e.g. validly-signed Windows drivers for the persistence layer. However the more interesting aspect is that it is spread via infected routers, of a type which, astonishingly even for consumer shitware, forces the execution of a x86 Windows binary for initial configuration.
An infected router dutifully augments this configurator with a rootkit installer; the rootkit, in turn, contains the typical keylogger and saved-password-collector, network topology probe, etc. components.
The more interesting and "unmentioned/unmentionable" aspect is however the identity of the router's manufacturer:
MikroTik. That very same Latvian USG shill company that's been deploying routers with nonfunctional RNGs and trivially-Phuctorable SSH keys for its entire existence. And dutifully spreads obfuscatory squid ink whenever the danger of public exposure seems acute.
US FBI And Canadian Mounties Kill Startup After Entrapment Campaign
The CEO of cellular phone hardware startup Phantom Secure was arrested following a joint entrapment campaign conducted by the US FBI and Canadian Mounties (archived). Phantom Secure specialized in reselling Blackberry phones that had been substantially improved through the removal of frivilous shit like cameras and microphones while loading the improved devices with a more mininalist operating system image.
Memcached DDoS Attacks Lead To Record Breaking Levels Of Wank
A recent wave of amplified DDoS attacks utilizing wrongly configured memcached servers has lead to unprecedented levels of wank among the self described "seekootity community" in recent days. The attacks work by sending spoofed UDP packets to the maliciously unsecured servers triggering the servers to respond by spewing data at the target destination.
The wank comes from an obvious solution which neuters the offending nuissance memcached installations. The memcached servers capable of being recruited into DDoS attacks are also vulnerable to being issued a "flush-all" command which will cause the server to register everything in its cache as expired. This denies an ongoing denial of service attack cached items to dump on a target (archived).
The wankers are naturally compelled to wank about the supposed ethics and inconveniences this obvious solution imposes on the dangerous idiots operating nuissance machines.
Arrangements Being Made For Donald Trump To Meet Kim Jung Un
Numerous outlets are reporting that arrangements are being made for Best Korean Leaders Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un to meet.
Nationalist Dissident Group Leadership Incarcerated In Britain
Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, leaders of the British Nationalist dissident group "Britain First" have been sentenced to spend 18 and 36 weeks respectively incarcerated for "anti-religious" hate crimes. The two were accused of spreading "hostility towards muslims" for bringing publicity to a "gang rape" trial. The kangaroo court further alleged the two engaged in abusive behavior towards circus bureacrats during their own trial.